History and Classics

Francis Landy

Professor Emeritus

History and Classics
University of Alberta
2-28 Tory Building
Edmonton AB Canada T6G 2H4

Education

Ph.D. University of Sussex (1983)
B.A. Cambridge University (1969)

Expertise & Research Interests

Francis Landy specializes in the literary study of the Hebrew Bible. He is particularly interested in questions of language, identity, and the relationship of poetry to trauma in the book of Isaiah, on which he has been writing for many years. His focus in this work has been sexuality and gender; death; alterity; and the constitutive enigma, whereby Isaiah is commissioned to speak so as not to be understood. Future topics on which he intends to write are parable and metaphor; maternal imagery in Deutero-Isaiah; and Trito-Isaiah. Other interests are Midrash, Kabbalah and theory in the study of religion, in which he straddles the divide between poetic and socially orientated approaches. His books include Paradoxes of Paradise: Identity and Difference in the Song of Songs, Hosea, a commentary in the Readings series published by Sheffield Phoenix Press, and Beauty and the Enigma and Other Essays on the Hebrew Bible. He is editor of the Canadian journal Studies in Religion, and is currently President of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. As graduate coordinator, he steered through the establishment of the doctoral program in Religious Studies at the University of Alberta.

"Shibboleth: The Password" Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies (1990) 91-99.

"On the Gender of God and the Feminist Enterprise: A Response to Shannon Clarkson" Studies in Religion 19 (1990) 485-487.

"Humour as a Tool in Biblical Exegesis" in On Humour and the Comic in the Hebrew Bible ed. A. Brenner and Y.T. Radday (Sheffield Academic Press: Sheffield, 1990) 101-117. Reprint of "Humour in the Bible" Jewish Quarterly 29/1 (1980) 13-19.

"Mishneh Torah: A Response to Myself and Phyllis Trible" in A Feminist Companion to the Song of Songs ed. A Brenner (Sheffield Academic Press: Sheffield 1993) pp. 260-265.

"Tracing the Voice of the Other: Isaiah 28 and the Covenant with Death." For The New Literary Criticism and the Hebrew Bible ed. David J. Clines and J. Cheryl Exum (Sheffield Academic Press: Sheffield, 1993) 140-162.

"The Construction of the Subject and the Symbolic Order: A Reading of the Last Three Suffering Servant Songs." Among the Prophets: Language, Image and Structure in the Prophetic Writings ed. Philip Davies (Sheffield Academic Press: Sheffield, 1993) pp. 60-71.

"On Metaphor, Play and Nonsense." Semeia 61 (1993) 219-237.

"Sacred Space and Public Pleasure." Muse II (1993) 22-27.

"Ruth and the Romance of Realism, or Deconstructing History" JAAR 62 (1994) pp.285-317.

"Fantasy and the Displacement of Desire in Hosea 2.4-17" in Athalya Brenner (ed.) A Feminist Companion to the Latter Prophets (The Feminist Companion to the Bible 8; Sheffield Academic Press: Sheffield), 1995 pp.145-160.

“Seraphim and Poetic Process.” In Fiona C.Black and Erin Runions (eds) The Labour of Reading: Essays in Honour of Robert C. Culley at the Time of His Retirement ( Semeia Studies; Atlanta: ScholarsPress, 2000), pp.15-34

“The Song of Songs.” For David N. Freedman (ed.). Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000) pp.1242-44

"Vision and Voice in Isaiah." Journal for the Study of the Old Testament.88 (2000) pp.19-36.

“Between David and David: Psalm 24 and David Clines” in J.Cheryl Exum and Hugh G. M. Williamson (eds) Reading from Right to Left: Essays on the Hebrew Bible in Honour of David J. A. Clines (London: Continuum, 2004), pp.275-289.